It led to Labor’s Council Opposition Leader Milton Dick bemoaning the proposal as the slow death of the Brisbane backyard.

On Friday Griffith University Adjunct Professor Tony Hall said the shrinking size of properties was the "outward physical expression of this massive change in Australian lifestyle", which was seeing people spend more time at work and less time outside.

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‘‘So Australia in the late 1970s and early 1980s - as is often claimed in the storybook idea - is a place of low working hours, easy-going with an outdoor life, very casual, with backyard barbies and that sort of thing,’’ he said.

‘‘By the end of the nineties - and in the outer suburbs certainly - Australia is an indoor, air-conditioned, with workaholics [type of place]."

Eight years ago, Professor Hall was a local councillor, town planning professor and an author in England.

In 2010, he wrote The Life and Death of the Australian Backyard and captured the imagination of planners Australia-wide, winning a Planning Institute of Australia award.

He said the problem for Brisbane was not so much the shift towards having smaller blocks of land, but instead covering a large part of blocks - regardless of their size - with very large houses.

‘‘So what you see in the outer suburbs - it is not just inner-suburb infill type of thing - if you go to the outer suburbs - anywhere called ‘Lakes’, you get these massive houses, McMansions.’’

Mr Hall said the problem was very obvious from the air.

‘‘If you look at any new Australian suburb. It is dramatic. It jumps out at you. Up until the 1980s it is all one thing - it is all trees,’’ he said.

‘‘By the end of the 1990s, it is all roof to roof.’’

He said any city needed backyards and Brisbane was no different.

‘‘Firstly, green space around buildings and housing is very important, it has a definite function,’’ Professor Hall said.

He said backyards absorbed stormwater, cooled homes and increased biodiversity.

‘‘So it has a very important role for the community as a whole and that is all in addition to all the recreational advantages and also the outlook from houses.’’

The solution was residents must ask local councils to demand that small blocks of land were not ‘‘covered’’ by large homes, he argued.

Professor Hall said only 50 per cent of a block should be covered by a house and the people of Brisbane should be debating the issue.

Brisbane City Council’s Neighbourhood Planning and Development Assessment committee chairwoman Cr Amanda Cooper said Brisbane City Council was aware of the changing face of Brisbane’s homes.

She said Brisbane’s town planning controls would restrict the size of homes on small lots and developers of smaller lots would be required to show that the new house would occupy no more than 60 per cent of the block.

On the smaller blocks (300 to 400 square metres) proposed in the draft City Plan, 100 square metres must be open space.

‘‘So if a new lot was 7.5 metres wide and over 25 metres deep, the backyard would be at least 45 square metres,’’ Cr Cooper said.

The rest of the open space would include a 1.5 metre strip down both sides of the block, with the front yard making up 100 sqm.

Cr Cooper said she believed Brisbane City Council had got the mix of building and green space right.

“This is about providing housing choice including encouraging first home buyers into the market as well as offering certainty to residents so they know what can go where,’’ she said.

‘‘That choice also includes backyards and it is up to the community as to what type of backyard suits them.’’

Cr Cooper said Brisbane City Council’s research showed growing demand for housing for singles and couples.

“The recent Census showed that single person and couple households account for a growing proportion of our community, with household members trending towards being older," she said.

‘‘Rather than ignore these issues, Brisbane’s draft new City Plan addresses them by encouraging greater housing options, many of which build upon successful housing types already occurring across the city - like on lots less than 450 square metres and in single unit dwellings.”

This week, a national banking finance report, the Bankwest Financial Indicator Series, revealed that two in five Australian home approvals over the past 12 months were for medium density homes.

It said two-thirds of local councils had seen an increase in medium-density housing in the past 12 months.

That is a seven per cent jump from five years ago, when 31 per cent of home approvals were for medium density housing, which includes units, townhouses and semi-detached houses.

"Australia’s high property prices have made the Australian dream of a stand-alone house in the suburbs harder to achieve,’’ she said.

‘‘People are increasingly choosing medium density housing as a more affordable alternative.”

The case in Queensland is slightly different to other states, according to this Bankwest study.

Queensland is slower to take up the national trend, except in inner-city Brisbane and on the Gold Coast, where medium density home make up the largest proportion of new housing approvals.

In Brisbane overall, at the time of the 2011 census, 22 per cent of the city’s homes were in medium density zones, which is below the average for other capital cities (28 per cent).

25 comments so far

Australian residential mix has been so badly designed its laughable. All those taxpayer funded trips to France and England and Germany and the USA have been in vain. What we have is typical money oriented shortsighted expansion. In Brisbane/QLD we have an almost completely car dependent way of living. We go on about the backyard yet nobody really uses theirs. I have an 8 acre backyard that was left unkempt for the best part of 15 years with a variety of different areas that could be utilized with a variety of purposes. We should have tree lined streets. Streets should be allowed to decide if they want to put mango, macadamia, guava, pecan, avocado, citrus, and other types of edibles. Councils should be making it easier, not harder. I'm sick of the permits required to do pretty much anything of anything. And the hand out for money. It's pathetic. Even these gated estates have got their hands out for money now. It's like a private council taking their cut before the council takes their cut before the state takes its cut. Absolutely pathetic.

Commenter

John Michaels

Date and time

February 23, 2013, 1:23AM

"backyards absorbed stormwater, cooled homes and increased biodiversity." The increased biodiversity is a total load of rubbish because if we don't increase housing density we'll need to cut down more forest to meet housing demand. The amount of new forest cut down would be greater than the amount of backyard space saved. Now I would assume that native forest has a lot more biodiversity than the backyards around Brisbane.

Commenter

Michael K

Location

Brisbane

Date and time

February 23, 2013, 1:25AM

A couple of points to make here before people get all antsy and start blaming the local government and developers.

First the minimum site coverage is determined by the Queensland Development Code, which is a State Government mandated requirement. Local governments can override it by the use of a specific planning instrument used for a valid planning reason. However, generally the manadated rate is used as the starting point for the majority of areas and is only varied in a few select areas.

People have choices. If you are building a house in a new estate, you have the choice to build a big house to the max site coverage, or a smaller house with a smaller footprint. Don't blame the local government or developer - its your choice. People still believe that you have to build big houses to maximise resale potential. Hello, there is a baby boomer generation out there that wants to move into smaller houses and release capital in their current large empty houses. Try finding a good small home to buy - there is not a lot out there.

Suburban developement is good and valid. I live in it and enjoy its benefit. However in any growing city there comes a time when the areas morphs from a village, into a town, into a suburban city, into an urban city and finally into a metropolis. The loss of the backyard will be envitible, unless we are happy to keep moving further and further outwards and spend all our lives in a car.

Personally I wouldn't like to live cheek by jowl, but I can afford to. I pity the young people coming through who don't have too many choices and will need to compromise to get a foot in the door.

Commenter

Observer

Date and time

February 23, 2013, 5:54AM

New subdivisions have little appeal as they seem a barren, hot wasteland without trees. I understand that flash flooding is compounded by non-absorbent, man-made structures so why on earth would we increase the risk through infill housing?

Along with this risk is the increased traffic congestion and issues of parking. Surely ventilation flow and cooling would become an issue and resulting further reliance on electrical consumption to maintain a comfortable living space.

Then I imagine there will be the social cost - like ferrets in a cage we might face social aggression for the lack of privacy and increased noise. Boxed in at work, boxed in at home - what kind of life is that?

Surely there are innovative green solutions such as roof gardens so that greenspace is maintained?

Sadly, I am skeptical that infill housing is the solution (maybe for developers to maximize their profit). If it is single accommodation that is required why not apartment clusters around transport infrastructure?

Call me old fashioned but I still wish for my plot with a vegie patch and a tree for the cat to climb.

Commenter

MsCosmopolitan

Location

Brisbane

Date and time

February 23, 2013, 6:22AM

This is the Neoliberals dirty little secret, the future that is planned for us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3anVdoTYgUE

Commenter

Professor Larry

Date and time

February 23, 2013, 6:50AM

I'd advise people to google 'Hong Kong's Dirty Little Secret' this is what the Neoliberal's has planned for us.

Commenter

Professor Larry

Date and time

February 23, 2013, 6:53AM

This jam-them-in 7.5 metre mentality is insane. Nothing should be less than 10 metres if a detached house lot.

The way to increase densities modestly across the city, without attacking people's amenity, is to raise building heights to 10 metres in order to allow 3 storeys including joists and 3 metre ceilings with a decent hat on top. Anything lower unduly restricts the roof style to an ugly flat lean-to like outcome.

The new CIty Plan should give people a bit more height to enable density increases and a proper aesthetically-pleasing outcome not like some of the truncated rubbish we've seen trotted out in recent years in order to fit that silly and unnecessary 8.5 metre rule. This also does not take any more from the greenspace surrounding the house.

Commenter

PO

Location

Taringa

Date and time

February 23, 2013, 7:00AM

An interesing article. One of the things that catches the attention of most tourists about Brisbane is its beautiful landscpe and vegetation. Given the current climate change and global warming, a well planned backyard with plenty of trees, flowers and vegies is absolutely essential. It not only keep the household busy with gardening but also make them relax, enjoy a good microclimate and great satisfaction of using their backyard flowers, fruits and vegies and even medicianal herbs (radium weed and others).

The City Council should encourage backyard gardens. Right now if you have, say 800sqM plot then you pay rates almost twice the rate paid by 400sqM plots. The City Council must base their rates on floor areas rather than land area and this will remove the current discrimination against large land areas and backyard.

Commenter

taurus

Location

Brisbane

Date and time

February 23, 2013, 7:08AM

"Given the current climate change and global warming, a well planned backyard with plenty of trees, flowers and vegies is absolutely essential." Okay ... where do you think most land in Brisbane for backyards came from??? Answer: Forest. Where do you think new housing demand will destroy? Answer: Forest. Do you seriously think a backyard will help the environment more than forest wasted for it's production?? Also, would do you think forcing housing demand 30-40km out from the city away from public transport will do for C02 production?? Look at the numbers, compact cities like Singapore have less than half the C02 production levels per capita than Australia. The reality is that backyards are killing the environment.

Commenter

Bob

Location

Brisbane

Date and time

February 23, 2013, 1:11PM

If it was up to me the people with large land areas that can subdivided would pay through the roof. We have a housing shortage and the easiest way to fix that would be to turn large blocks into smaller blocks. For people like you to dictate what other people do with their backyards while we have young people who can't afford homes anymore is amazingly selfish. What's more important: young people owning their homes, or a weed garden? In the long run, I tell you, when people don't end up owning homes you'll see a loss of community and crime go up. Mortgages give people a goal and keep them out of trouble.